Walk a mile in my shoes, please!

Really stepping into someone’s shoes makes a difference.

When you start empathising with someone, start to silently observe, you can get a real insight into someone else’s life.

you will truly feel what it means to be…, what it means to have…, what it means to want…

Sometimes empathy beats the best advice.

When people are going through a rough time, they’d rather hear no advice, even if it’s the best. However, you can still help them quietly by empathising with their sorrows. They do sense when you are there with them, for real, and that’s enough!

I think empathising isn’t practiced enough at universities, schools and courses. Both in the business and in the mental health fields, I hear a lot of people being advised. I always wonder how helpful this advice actually is.

When stepping in someone else’s shoes for a while, I mostly shut up or start asking questions: questions about everything in his/her life. My favorites are questions that make them smile inside (because they feel a strength, a resource, a forgotten gladness because of a funny incident). Questions about their preferred future. With all my gathered answers, I am so much closer to feeling what it means to be them; to be them at that moment in life at that place on earth…

What I want is to help them achieve their goal, reach their preferred future. I want to help them “go for it” and start working! And at the same time, I know how hard it can be: I’m still in their shoes!

So I tell myself that there is no rush! I change my approach and come up with other questions to open up their minds. I try to avoid suggesting things, like “Would you be able to…?” or “Perhaps you could try…” – I don’t particularly like to those questions myself! But I do love to look around in their lives and see whether there are situations, actions, thoughts, feelings, connections that can help the situation they find themselves in at that very moment.

There are so many questions to ask that will make your co-worker, student, junior salesman, senior manager, soulmate and even your mother in law 🙂 tell you about better days, good decisions, fine outcomes, great intuition, etc. And you are right to ask them: when talking about their skills, resources and competences, they feel empowered!

And that’s when I step into my own shoes again. However, the conversation is far from over…